Consider: always baths and no showers. Consider floor to floor carpeting in bathrooms and kitchens. Consider not rinsing when washing dishes and letting them dry with soapy water on them. Yes, it's England. Consider tramping around inside with your shitty outside shoes on. These people are disgusting barbarians.
House-building has not advanced since the Victorian era. The Victorians were quiet people who were not into fat bass and therefore the sound insulation is atrocious. The drains or plumbing invariably have some sort of problems, and houses are poorly insulated against heat or more importantly, cold.
Apparently, through some accident of architectural acoustics, it is possible for the upstairs neighbours to hear everything that goes on in this room, and for me to sit in the bathroom and hear what is going on upstairs. Apparently this is so, as I received another late-night knock asking to keep the noise down. I wasn't making a noise and nor was anyone else. Or maybe my typing now is keeping them awake in bed.
I couldn't decide whether to be belligerent about it or sympathetic, so I asked: "Is it really that bad? Is the sound insulation seriously that bad?" The answer I got of yes seemed sincere. So did the "We can hear everything you're saying, we can hear the music as if it was in our room. We're trying to sleep, the kids have to get up at 7 - 7! - in the morning..." Shit, I've been waking at 5...
If that is literally true: that it is really possible to hear everything that is said in here in a normal voice... Goodness... You have been witness to some really scandalous stuff... You might as well have been reading realgem... No, better even...
If that is literally true... Well... I'm not saying anything illegal ever took place or was ever discussed, you dig? What, everything? You've heard... what exactly? Interesting proposition. You know about... that thing? and... that thing? and...
God. I wish I had such interesting neighbours. We'd have a lot in common.
Well, I do, but neighbours horizontally rather than vertically. They are wonderful people. All I ever hear from upstairs is some kid being told off. Repeatedly and at length.
I don't have curtains on my windows either, so I can always see the sky.
